A/N: You may have noticed that I tend to skip over mentioning in detail the duels, there is a reason other than laziness for this, it's because Sophie doesn't care. She is more emotionally attatched to the Duelists that amazed by the game. I think this gives her a different facet to OC's generally put in YGO fics. At least, I hope it does and I'm not coming across like a pretentious fool XD

X_X

I've hit 30 reviews! That probably sounds small, but it means alot to me XD

~Ava

~XxX~

I don't know when it came to pass but:

"FUCKING CRUSH HIM JOEY!"

I now was better than I thought at motivation.

"Uhh, Sophie?" Teá asked from my left, looking at me in complete bewilderness as I screamed, I paused and turned to face her.

"What?" I asked, suddenly switching to my normal voice as Marik played a new card, Teá sighed and patted my shoulder.

"Just...not so violent next time okay?" She asked, smiling at my newfound enthusiam.

"Oh my god..." Mai said, sounding disgusted as Teá and I looked to her, "what is that?" She asked, pointing to the dueling field. Teá and I followed her stare before wincing a tad.

"That's just...not right." Duke said from the far right of Serenity as I grimaced slightly at the weird red...worm...thing.

"Holy hell," I hissed to Yami, "does that thing have an eye?" He nodded at my question, not taking his own eyes off the monster.

"It's a very rare card...and it seems familiar..." He said, trailing off towards the end, I frowned at this before my memory of what Teá had told me about Yugi's...other side came to the fore. I looked back at the eye on the freakish thing, which seemed to have swollen since I had last glanced at it, I suppose it did look similar to the eye of it certainly wasn't that eye...

"I will now sacrfice my monster to summon the most feared of all cards! The God card that lies within the temple behind me!" Marik shouted, pointing at the worm, which had wiped out all of Joey's cards while I wasn't paying attention, and it shattered into several holographic pieces. The golden temple behind Marik glowed ominously. "WINGED DRAGON OF RA! HEAR MY CALL!" I winced as Marik started to shout, his voice booming over the whole upper deck. Teá and Yami gasped,obviously knowing what this meant, I quickly turned to Teá.

"What's he doing?" I hissed again, she shook her head in answer as the entire deck was lit up with a neon green glow. I turned slowly back to the duel and saw why as I and the rest of my friends, were knocked back a step or two by a gust of wind.

A sixty metre high beam of light had shot into the sky and disappeared into the clouds, I shielded my yes with my forearm and when I'd lowered it, I gasped.

"Whoa..." I too, tailed off as I spoke, but my reaction was brought on by the sight of a massive golden dragon, looming over the entire deck. I shrunk a little backwards into my friends and chanced a glance across the deck at Kaiba, who had a smirk on his face.

"RA! OBEY ME AND CRUSH JOEY WHEELER!" Marik called, having turned to face the golden dragon which seemed to glare at him for several seconds.

"Look!" Yami said, drawing our attention to Namu, or more speciffcally, his deck.

"I-it's glowing!" Teá said, sounding as confused as I felt.

"Did he just say 'Ra'?" I asked, puzzled as to the use of the Egyptian Sun God's name useage, "Why is his deck glowing? Just-just WHAT is going on here?" I yelled the question, demanding an answer.

"He isn't Marik.." Yami murmured, looking at Marik and frowning, a look that I mirrored with equal fervor.

"Of course he's Mari-" I was cut off by Namu's deck glowing brighter before the dragon roared and lightning struck Marik in the chest. A collectve gasp went up from myself and my friends as he fell to the ground, Namu taking a step forward out of the corner of my eye.

"Odion!" He called to the falling man, to which Teá, Yami and I frowned at. We were stopped from acting on this by Serenity's scream.

"JOEY NO!"

Yami and I looked up, yelling the same a few seconds after her as Teá and Mai gasped at the sight of the slightly reckless blonde collapsing to the floor after a lightning bolt struck him too. Tristan was the first of us to recover from the shock, leaping onto the raised steps of the plaform and using them as a ladder to get halfway up when he was accosted by Roland.

"Hey! You! What are you doing? The duel isn't over yet!" Roland yelled at Tristan, who choked on his words.

"Open your eyes! Can't you see these two need medical attention?" He yelled as I balled my hands into fists, just knowing what the bodyguard was going to say next.

"That may be true, but look at their life points." I frowned, my nails digging into my palms, 200 LP apiece. "According to Battle City rules this duel is still in progress!" Tristan's mouth dropped open at the sheer idiocy of that statment. I took a deep breath.

"Who CARES about the stupid cardgame next to their LIVES? Seriously?" I yelled to enunciate my sentence, my patience having been worn down to the bone in the ride up here, said patience-wearer sighed disinterestedly.

"I don't have time for this Callaghan." Kaiba said, folding his arms and closing his eyes, rendering my death-glare useless. "The first Duelist to stand will be the winner by forefit." I gritted my teeth to prevent the string of profantities I had at the ready back, remembering the truce.

"Look!" Teá said, pointing at Marik, who scrambled to his knees before keeling over and staying down. Joey however seemed to be struggling to his feet. The second he stood and Roland declared him the winner, Tristan was helping him stay on his feet.

"You won man!" Tristan said, holding Joey up as the platform sunk into the deck, we crowded round the two of them as Joey shook off the remenants of unconsciousness, looking over to the prone form of Marik, sprawled across the field. He and Yami ran to him as he slowly raised his head.

"I am sorry Joey Wheeler, it was an honour to duel you..." He said as Yami helped him st up, I had wandered cautiously after my two most headstrong friends, frowning as I caught the tail-end of what he had said.

"...Fuck. You were right." I swore, scrunching my eyes shut and opening them again, "he isn't Marik..." Joey nodded as Yami frowned.

"She...she is right..." The tattooed man gasped the words out through, what I imagined, was alot of pain. My look of cynisism remained on my face as I found it hard to feel any sympathy for the man who had almos killed my friend, however, my friends were far less grudge-holding that I was.

"So then, who are you buddy?" Joey asked, helping the man stay up as I held back my choked protest, watching as he spoke and slowly pointed to Namu.

"I work for the real...Master Marik. Help him..." He lost consciousness agaim, this time for good as myself and my two friends shared a look of shock before we glanced over to Namu-the real Marik-who was clutching his head before he turned to face us, snickering lowly.

"That's right fools...I AM MARIK." He laughed a tad inanely before clutching his head again. Teá held a hand to her chest as though her next revelation physically pained her.

"So...Namu...lied to us?" She asked, as I felt a little sorry for her, my closest friend was undoubtably a noted lying-condemner. Marik laughed again, brandishing the same gold winged rod that Odion had had, before the lightning struck him.

"You really are foolish, Namu was a disgiuse I used to gain your trust and the six locator cards I needed to get into the finals. Hahaha-" He was cut off from more demented pontificating by him clutching his head again, however this time, he didn't continue to laugh. Odion stirred a little, looking blearily at Marik.

"Yo, buddy, you got any idea what's going on with Marik over there?" Joey asked, while still watching Marik carefully, Odion answered slowly, taking his time to say each word correctly.

"Master Marik has a...darker side...one that we'd kept at bay for many years...help him Joey Wheeler, he is not like this...the hatred in him has made him thi..." I frowned at Odion's unfinished sentence, eyes widening at the low laugh behind us.

"Too long has that fool Odion kept me at bay, but now..." I turned to see Marik...or what...seemed to be Mariklaugh with a deliberate malevolence that made me sure that Odion was the least of our problems. "Now, I'm free. And you-" he pointed at Yami, who straightened his back while still crouched next to Odion, "you Pharaoh, will pay for enslaving me."

~XxX~

"YOU JERK!"

"Teá that's a bit har-"

"NO SOPHIE. HE'S BEING A JERK."

"Maybe you should list-"

"SHUT UP JOEY." Teá and I yelled at the blonde in sync, the Teá grabbed Joey's ear and pulled him down to her level.

"You jerk! Mai wanted to know if she was your friend and you just acted like an immature idiot!" She stressed the last word, "I'm so angry with you right now, I'm not talking to you until you apologise to her." With that, my closest friend let go of his ear and stormed off. Joey rubbed his left ear for a second before turning to me to laugh, I rolled my eyes and flung my hands in the air, walking back to the lottery.

"She has a point you utter twonk."

"H-hey!" I heard him yell after me, "I don't know what that means!" I snickered at my usage of a British endearment and left him behind.

~XxX~

A/N: If you're interested, "Twonk" is generally used to mean, "Look, I love you, but you're an idiot." At least, that's how we use it in my area XD

Sorry for no update yeasterday! Real-life happened.

Double-update tomorrow to make up for it?

~Ava